There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the hi...gh fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

For the most part, there was no recognition of human life in the night; no human breathing was heard, only the breathing of the wi...nd. As we sat up, kept awake by the novelty of our situation, we heard at intervals foxes stepping about over the dead leaves, and brushing the dewy grass close to our tent, and once a musquash fumbling among the potatoes and melons in our boat; but when we hastened to the shore we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl; but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »